


with a chip of mirror in his eye

by akitania (spacehairdresser)



Series: to know collapse [1]
Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 09:53:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10942071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehairdresser/pseuds/akitania
Summary: So there’s this rumor.The Matoba clan adopted a child, a boy, some stray they found half dead in the woods after a youkai attack. He was once the grandson of Natsume Reiko — a woman who lived and died decades ago, but the name is familiar for some reason — but that’s over now. Matoba Takashi is ten years old, with soft brown eyes and scars on his throat.





	with a chip of mirror in his eye

So there’s this rumor.

The Matoba clan adopted a child, a boy, some stray they found half dead in the woods after a youkai attack. He was once the grandson of Natsume Reiko — a woman who lived and died decades ago, but the name is familiar for some reason — but that’s over now. Matoba Takashi is ten years old, with soft brown eyes and scars on his throat. He has a silent, trembling grace.

The rumor goes: this boy is the new heir.

Nonsense, probably; Matoba had a son by his late wife, a boy who is _sharp_ in a way most seventeen-year-olds could never be. A prodigy, everyone says. No one had questioned that he would inherit. _But who would want that for their only son?_ someone asks once. _Matoba-sama does love that boy, after all._ There’s a degree of bargaining the man must do.

The exorcist gossip mill moves slowly, and three years later, no one has decided what they think will become of the boy until time decides for them. At the funeral, Matoba Takashi, the new clan head, is still silent and scarred but his eyes are not so soft. He holds himself carefully. _Like a child emperor_ , someone says.

Well, everyone knows it’s just a title, that he is in practice more a scapegoat than anything. He has retainers and aunts and uncles and cousins, after all. He has, too, an elder brother.

After a while, public (such as it is) opinion begins to spin the other way. For his thirteen years, the head is a greater prodigy than even the discarded heir, with none of the ego or cruelty. Very little is said of that boy — man, now, twenty and handsome and quieter than he had been once — at least by those who know him. Maybe he’s playing the cunning advisor, pulling the strings of a child too young and distant for politics. _Some people prefer to stay behind the scenes_ , one someone equivocates, smiling more sardonically than he does for the cameras. Not him, of course.

There’s a rumor that Matoba Takashi, fifteen years old and with eyes utterly hardened, is so quiet because he chooses to spend his time with youkai. _Well_ , gossip says, _it makes sense that he’d prefer them to clan elders!_ (Gossip says that very quietly.)

Still, youkai don’t even know his name. They call him by one he hasn’t had for years and by one that was never his, but what is his, anyway? His inheritance by blood and by name was generations of anger and hunger, an unmade reputation for broken promises.

What other people say, which is just as true but less scandalous, is that the boy does have friends, human ones. They live mundane lives, and most of them have no idea that he does not.

 

So there’s this rumor, and this one isn’t true. Matoba Takashi doesn’t die at seventeen. It’s not even true that his brother tried to kill him after it all happened, but that’s harder to confirm. Matoba Seiji, ever the enigma, vanishes, in smooth avoidance of the avalanche that would have surrounded him. When he returns, there is little to reclaim, and he is forgotten, anyway.

Takashi could be found without trouble if anyone looked for him. He lives with a priest and the priest’s son and a fat tricolor cat. He smiles easily, and his one brown eye is gentle.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a cleaned-up version of a drabble I posted on tumblr. I'm hoping to write some more in the AU, so I figured I'd finally put it up over here.
> 
> The title is from Adrienne Rich's "The Snow Queen" which may make this something of an AU within an AU... if it is, it's a good thing Natsume is playing the role roughly analogous to Kai, because Natori would make an indifferent Gerda at best.


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